


Turn of the Year

by emungere



Series: Ladders [20]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Paris (City), Shopping, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:45:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9050254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: Their first Christmas together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [辞旧迎新](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15275175) by [Lisimo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisimo/pseuds/Lisimo)



> Thanks very much to Makenna and louiselux for betaing! <3

Hannibal held the taxi door open and reached for Will’s hand to help him out. Will straightened up, blinked, and stared at the glowing height of the Eiffel Tower against the black sky. The taxi pulled away. People moved around them in a blur of flesh and color. 

Will leaned on his cane. “I didn’t think I’d care,” he said. “It’s just another tourist thing. But I’m glad you dragged me out here.” 

“It is a good time to see it. Perhaps somewhat garish, but it shows better with people about it than it does alone in the gloom of February. No matter how much you might prefer that.” 

Will elbowed him gently in the side but said nothing. They walked toward the Christmas market that had been set up at the base of the tower. Dozens of stalls sold food and drink, souvenirs, Christmas ornaments, art, and handicrafts. One of Hannibal’s most vivid memories was of walking alone through the city at Christmastime after his first term of boarding school. He had been fourteen and already convinced that humanity was not for him. The crisp air and blue sky and merry voices had made him feel the entire city was his to harvest. 

"Do you usually get a tree?" Will asked. He was engaged in examining the small pastries in one of the stalls and did not look at Hannibal. 

Behind the oblique question and carefully neutral tone, Hannibal heard that peculiar mix of hope and indifference that often accompanied Will’s rare requests. Hannibal had almost convinced himself that he could smell it in the air, something like fear and cinnamon. He provided the correct answer. “Always. You will have to resign yourself to it, I’m afraid.” 

Will glanced at him then with suspicion that lasted only a moment. “I don’t mind,” he said. 

“What about you? Did you usually have one?” 

"The first year I moved to Wolf Trap. Not after that."

"And when you were younger?" 

Will paused in the space between stalls to look up at the lights. ”We had a fake one for a while. We had to pack fast for a job and it got left behind. It was kind of a mess anyway." He held one arm out like a broken tree branch. 

"Still, you must have been sorry to lose it." 

Will made a rueful face. ”I hated it. Never told Dad. He was trying. But I wanted a real one, and that wasn't going to happen, so." He shrugged. 

"But when you got your own, you didn't find it satisfactory?"

"There just didn't seem to be much point. It made one of the dogs sneeze, I didn't have any ornaments, and then it dried out and dropped needles everywhere."

“I will vacuum the needles up myself.”

Will smiled a little. “You vacuum everything anyway. And I said I don’t mind.” He picked up a small wooden star and turned it between his fingers. "There's a bunch of firs out behind the house about the right size. We could cut one down ourselves. If you want."

Hannibal watched Will’s hands and tried to let neither his amusement nor his overwhelming fondness show in voice. "That would do nicely. And we will need ornaments of course. Do you think the FBI will use mine to decorate the Evil Minds Museum for the holidays?" 

That got a startled laugh out of Will. "Maybe I'll suggest it to Beverly."

"Do you like that one?"

Will looked down at the star in his hands as if he hadn't realized he was holding it. "I guess so. Yeah. The joins are neat, and it's nice wood."

Hannibal took it from him and spoke to the woman behind the counter. A minute or two later, they walked off with the little star in a bag looped around Will's wrist. "Is this why we're in Paris?" Will said. "Ornaments and tourist stuff?" 

"I did want to get some more clothes. I don't have that much for the winter."

“Are you saving those twelve sweaters to wear in August?”

"You are exaggerating,” Hannibal said. 

"Not by much."

"Nevertheless. It won't take long, and you don't have to come if you don't want to. Apart from that, there are a few places from my past that I want to show you."

"And your aunt's grave."

"Yes. We can bring her flowers. Or perhaps a libation of mulled wine."

"I think the other people at the cemetery might object to you splashing alcohol on the graves."

"How else is one to summon ghosts to council?" Hannibal stopped in front of a stall selling glass globes with tiny spun glass figures and hand-painted scenes inside them. "What do you think of these?"

Will reached for one that enclosed two figures walking through a forest of glass trees, trailed by three dogs. He stopped before he touched it. "The dogs will break it." He put his hand in his pocket like he was afraid of breaking it himself. 

"We'll hang it out of reach," Hannibal said. He bought it, and it joined the star in the bag around Will's wrist, which Will now held with conscious care. 

Lights bubbled up the length of the Eiffel Tower like gold champagne. The crowds grew thicker. People laughed and talked around them, and Hannibal once again had that feeling of a hunter in a world of prey. He looked at Will beside him, leaning on his cane and gazing upward like any other beast in the throng. Hannibal might have picked him out and followed him through the streets and strangled him in some lightless alley without ever speaking to him, without ever knowing him. 

He took Will's arm and drew him closer. Will looked at him with a question in his eyes, but he didn't object. "Shall we go up?" Hannibal said. 

"Only if we're taking the elevator."

"Certainly."

Hannibal bought their tickets. They rode up to the first floor. "We're not going all the way?" Will asked. 

"Not yet." Hannibal led him over to the edge of the ice skating rink that had been set up, two hundred feet above the city. 

Will stared, lips parted, colored lights sliding over his face. A smile started to pull at the corners of his mouth. Two small children flew by, followed by one unsteady caretaker clinging to the side of the rink. Two women kissed in front of the small model of the Eiffel tower while a third took their picture. 

“I didn’t know this was up here," Will said softly. He looked behind them, down over the lights of the city, and then at Hannibal. “This is…”

"What?" Hannibal asked. 

Will shook his head. "Our life at home seems pretty normal. Cooking and dog hair and bitching about whose turn it is to do the laundry. But sometimes... being with you feels like living in a story. Like everything's too much to be real." 

"This is all perfectly ordinary," Hannibal said. "They do it every year."

"Put it this way. If someone had told me when I was their age”—he nodded to the children on the ice—“that my life might someday include ice skating at the Eiffel Tower, I would've ..."

"Laughed?"

Will shook his head. "It wouldn't have been funny. Just impossible." 

"Would you like to try it? I promise not to let you fall."

"No thanks. I'd rather not break anything else."

"Next Christmas perhaps."

Will leaned against his side and clasped his wrist briefly. "You promised me forty years. We've got plenty of Christmases."

They took the elevator up to the second floor. In comparison to the lights and crowds below, it was dark and almost deserted. A few couples stood near the edge. Will walked to the far side and stopped, looking down, face blank. Hannibal stood beside him. He put a hand on Will's back. 

"Do you ever think maybe it's not real?" Will said. 

"Nearly every morning I wake up beside you."

Will turned to him, uncertain, like he thought Hannibal might be mocking him. "You can't mean that."

"I'm afraid I do."

Will curled his fingers around the lapel of Hannibal's coat and tugged him down. Their lips met. Will's breath was warm on Hannibal's cheek. Hannibal had expected something brief. Will wasn't given to any sort of public display, but, after a moment, Will slid both arms around his neck, and Hannibal was left to grab his cane before it fell to the ground. 

Will made an amused sound. "Nice catch." He pressed his mouth against Hannibal's again, and there was no chance to reply. Hannibal's thoughts tended to be less than acute under these circumstances anyway. 

\\*

A dust of snow covered the tops of the gravestones in Père Lachaise Cemetery. It was just after ten in the morning, and the winter sun slanted low through the trees and snuck between monuments and mausoleums to fall in bright stripes across the path. Will was looking at a map. "Did you know Jim Morrison's buried here?"

"I did. I believe his grave gets a deal of attention and offerings. We can see it on the way out if you like." 

"Sure," Will said, managing a casual tone slightly better than he had when discussing the Christmas tree. "Anything to put off your shopping." 

"I've never heard you listen to his music."

"I don’t much anymore, but I loved him in high school. He was probably the first guy I had a thing for, even if I didn't know it at the time. Which is a little weird, since he died before I was born."

"He was a romantic figure. The Lord Byron of his age, perhaps."

"I don't know if that's insulting to Byron or Morrison."

“Undoubtedly Byron. Here we are." Hannibal brushed snow off the top of Murasaki's grave. A flower holder stood to one side. He removed the plastic sheets from the bouquet of white spider chrysanthemums and placed them into it. 

Will squatted down to study the black granite gravestone. Hannibal watched the reflection of Will's face in its surface and wondered how much he was seeing. Even Hannibal's sparse recounting of her death had seemed to grip Will and shake him in its teeth. 

Hannibal had chosen the stone to provide a physical representation of her last sight of the world, looking up through water stained black with the tannins from decaying vegetation. He thought of the funeral, of laying rosemary, fennel, and columbine on the bare earth, of seeing himself reflected in the granite. For a moment, he felt as though he had left that shadow-self behind him in the cemetery, forever looking up through the water. 

Will glanced at him over his shoulder. "You okay?" 

"Of course." 

"Tell me about her?" 

"She met my uncle in Kyoto. They were married, and she returned with him to France. She died here in Paris without seeing her home again."

Will touched the dates on the stone. "Only twenty-seven."

"The same age as Jim Morrison, I believe." 

Will looked up at him. "How do you know that?" 

"She took me walking in this cemetery often."

"Would you rather not have come?" 

Hannibal looked down at him and touched his hair. "You suspect me of killing her, but you are still concerned for my feelings."

“I’m pretty sure you could still grieve for her if you’d killed her.” 

Hannibal held out a hand and helped him to his feet. “I would certainly have grieved for you.” 

“Good thing you didn’t kill me then,” Will said easily. 

“A very good thing, yes.” Hannibal put his hands on Will’s waist and pulled him close. 

Will evaded his kiss but didn’t pull away. He took hold of Hannibal’s scarf. “Did you? Kill her?” 

“In a manner of speaking. I failed to save her.” 

“Like your patients. You told me that was why you stopped being a surgeon.” 

Hannibal nodded once and dipped his head a little lower. This time, Will allowed the kiss. 

“So what did you stop being when you failed to save her?” Will asked. 

“A child, I suppose.” Hannibal looked past Will at the gravestone. He saw his face reflected in its surface: seventeen, expressionless, untouched by grief. "If I ever was one." 

"Did you love her?"

"I told you once that I don't believe in love." 

"Yeah," Will said. "I bought it back then. I know you better now." 

"Sometimes I think you know me more intimately than I know myself. Did I love her?" 

"I think if you have to ask you probably did. Come on. Let's find Morrison." 

Will took his hand and led him away from the grave of one young death to another. Their footprints in the skim of snow were as dark as black water.


	2. Chapter 2

Hannibal stood in the fitting room of the menswear shop and looked through half a dozen shirts. He was pulling on a narrow burgundy stripe when the shop assistant knocked on the door. 

Hannibal opened it. “Yes?” 

The man held out a sweater to him. “Your friend asked me to bring you this, sir.” 

Hannibal raised his eyebrows at that but thanked him and took it. Alone once again, he looked it over. It was, as he might have predicted, very soft to the touch, a dark green cashmere. He paired it with a pale blue shirt and, after a moment, went out to show Will. 

Three deep leather armchairs sat outside the fitting rooms, and Will had claimed one as soon as they entered the shop. He sat there now, legs crossed, cane propped against the chair. Someone had brought him coffee in a blue china cup with a gold rim. 

“What do you think of your choice?” Hannibal said. 

Will gestured with one finger for him to turn around. He did and then stepped closer, enjoying the way Will looked him over. 

Will reached up and touched his side. “Soft. I like it. You should get that one.” 

“Then I shall. Is there anything else you would like to see?” 

“Yeah, there was a gray one too with a zipper. Maybe a couple other things. I’ll ask the sales guy to get them for you.” 

“I look forward to it. You seem to be enjoying this more than you expected to.” 

“You should've told me earlier the store had chairs and coffee. I would’ve been a lot more enthusiastic,” Will said. 

When Hannibal had returned to the fitting room, the shop assistant appeared with the gray sweater, a number of shirts, a pair of wool trousers, and a sport jacket. All of Will’s choices were less fitted and of a more rugged design than the things Hannibal usually purchased, clearly intended for a life in the country than the city. That was the life they had, after all. Hannibal was not dissatisfied with it, nor with the clothes. 

Even if he had disliked them, he might have overlooked it. The idea of wearing things that Will had chosen pulled at him. He stripped off his shirt and examined his shoulder in the mirror. The mark of Will's teeth had faded, but this was another sort of mark, and nearly as welcome.

He’d just put on the trousers and sweater when the shop assistant knocked on the door again, this time with a pair of what appeared to be cashmere lounge pants and a slightly hunted expression. “He — your friend asks that you come out so he can see how they look, sir.” He stumbled over the word friend this time. 

Hannibal set the lounge pants down and followed him out. Will had his legs stretched out in front of him, coffee cup balanced on the arm of the chair. He looked Hannibal over again, more slowly this time. “Do you like them?” he said. 

“I do.” Hannibal walked over and turned around for him. He leaned against the side of the chair and took a sip of Will’s coffee. “You may be giving that young man the wrong impression.” 

Will raised his eyebrows. “I think I’m giving him the right impression. Or are we suddenly pretending we’re not together?”

“That wasn’t the impression I was speaking of. What message did you ask him to deliver to me?” 

Will stole his coffee back. “I just said he should tell you I wanted to see the stuff before you decided on anything.” 

“And will you be paying for it as well after you’ve decided what you’d prefer to see me in?” 

Will opened his mouth to reply, stopped, and took a sip of coffee instead. “I might be too used to you — ah—“ He waved a hand vaguely in the air. 

Hannibal smiled. “Indulging your every whim?” 

The tips of Will’s ears turned faintly pink. “That’s not — okay, maybe a little. Are you complaining?”

“Not at all. I enjoy it.” 

“Then go try on your weird sweatpants and let him think what he wants.” 

Hannibal stooped down to steal a kiss. Will kept him there for a second with a hand on the back of his neck and then pushed him gently away. 

When Hannibal returned a few minutes later, he wore the cashmere pants and nothing else. Will stared and then glanced around them. The shop assistant was nowhere to be seen, which seemed to relieve his mind. His face smoothed out, but his ears stayed pink as he beckoned Hannibal closer. 

“How do they feel?” he asked. 

“See for yourself.” 

Will put a hand on his thigh and slid it upwards. He stopped at Hannibal’s hip and swallowed. “Well, I guess we’re getting them. Since you’re not wearing underwear.” 

“If I wore them solely so that you could touch me through them, I would consider it money well spent,” Hannibal said. He watched Will’s tongue move over his lower lip. 

“We should go back to the hotel,” Will said. 

“You don’t want to see the rest of it?”

“I do. In the hotel room.” Will stood and caught Hannibal close with an arm around his waist and a hand squarely on his left buttock. “Just tell him we’re getting it all. I’ll pay while you get your clothes back on.” 

Hannibal was more than happy to agree. 

\\*

They got a taxi back to the hotel. Will put a hand on Hannibal’s knee and looked out the window. He didn’t speak, and Hannibal didn’t try to draw him out. 

When they reached the hotel room, Will sat down on the edge of the bed. “Put those sweatpants back on,” he said. 

“Just those?”

“Just those, yeah.” 

Hannibal undressed down to his skin and took the tags off before he pulled them on. He came to stand between Will’s spread legs. 

Will put both hands on him immediately, on his thighs and then his ass and then cupping his cock through the soft fabric. “I wanted to do this in the store.” 

“You could have.” 

“Pretty sure we would’ve gotten thrown out.” 

“How much did you spend?” 

“Close to three grand. These fucking sweatpants were eight hundred.” 

“I don’t think we would have been thrown out.” 

“We would have if I’d asked you to get on your knees and let me fuck your mouth.” 

“That does seem likely,” Hannibal admitted. “Is that what you want?” 

“In a minute.” 

What Will wanted, apparently, was to rub his face against Hannibal’s cock through the cashmere and grab greedy handfuls of his ass. The soft fabric slid over Hannibal’s thighs and balls and between his cheeks. Will dug his fingers in and squeezed. 

Hannibal swayed toward him, closing his eyes. He buried his hands in Will’s hair. He was fully hard now. His erection pressed against the front of the sweatpants and distended the fabric. 

Will brushed his fingertips down its length. “Turn around.” 

Hannibal did, and got Will’s hands back on his ass as a reward. Will gripped the flesh tight and then smoothed his palms over it and down Hannibal’s thighs. He cupped both cheeks. His thumb traced the cleft between them. “Can I…” 

“Yes,” Hannibal said. “Anything short of evisceration, yes. You don’t need to ask.” 

Will paused. “You want me to ask first if I’m planning to eviscerate you?”

“Ideally.” 

“If we get to that point, I probably won’t be in an asking mood.” 

“I did say ideally.” 

“Right. Noted.” Will’s hand left his ass just long enough to draw back and smack it sharply. Both of them caught their breath. 

“Come here,” Will said. “Lie down across my lap.” He sounded thoughtful. When Hannibal complied, he could feel Will’s erection pressing against his hip. Hannibal’s cock rubbed between his thighs, and Hannibal rocked slowly into the space there. He stretched out, pleased to be the focus of Will’s attention, wherever this led. 

Will rested a hand on his lower back. “Can I do it again?”

“Yes.” 

Will hit him again. Even muffled by the fabric, it made a surprisingly loud sound in the still room. The heating went on with a click in the silence that followed. Down on the street, horns sounded a distant, tinny chorus. Hannibal rested his head on his crossed arms. 

“Does it hurt?” Will said. 

“Not as such. I imagine it would sting more on bare skin. Does this hurt?” He pressed his weight more firmly against Will’s thigh, where the design he had cut was nearly healed.

“Not much. I think I’ll be sorry when I can’t feel it anymore.” 

“I can always reopen it for you. Or give you another one.” 

Will swallowed audibly. “Yeah. Maybe another. Lift your hips up.” 

Hannibal did, and Will pulled the pants down to the tops of his thighs. The next strike was on bare skin. 

The sound echoed off the walls and through Hannibal’s body, sharp and hot. He spoke without meaning to. “Again.” 

Will seemed happy to oblige. The next blow had more force behind it. The one after that caught the tender skin at the top of his thigh, and Hannibal shifted, cock sliding against soft fabric and Will’s heat. 

Will hit him again and again with very little pause and then stopped, gripping the back of Hannibal’s neck. He took a hard breath. Hannibal arched his back encouragingly, and Will ran a finger down his spine. “You like it,” Will said. 

“So do you.”

“I don’t know — yeah. I do.”

“Then why have you stopped?” 

Will struck him again. He didn’t stop this time. He distributed the blows evenly, and Hannibal’s skin grew warm with them and then hot and then it started to burn, like he was smoldering inside and Will was fanning his flames. He stretched out his arms over his head and put his palms flat on the cool bedspread. Will’s free hand stroked his back and down over his heated skin between blows, soothing. 

By the time he stopped, Hannibal’s skin tingled all over, not just where Will had struck him. He stretched longer and rubbed his face against the bedspread and his cock against Will’s thighs. 

Will let out a breath of laughter. “You look happy.” 

“I am,” Hannibal said. It came out deep and slow. 

Will kept stroking his back and down over his ass and thighs. “Doesn’t hurt too much?”

“Hardly at all. You can continue.” 

“No, I think that’s enough. Turn over for me.” 

Hannibal moved as directed until he was naked and lying with his head in Will’s lap. Will wrapped a hand around his cock and stroked him lightly. Hannibal’s hips flexed upward. He closed his eyes. 

“You look so good,” Will said quietly. 

“Like this?”

“Like this and every other way.” 

Hannibal got his eyes half open. Will watched him, gaze moving between his face and his cock with concentration and an odd tenderness. 

“Will you let me suck you after this?” Hannibal said. 

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” 

“Yes. I’d like to.” 

Will squeezed his cock gently and stroked him faster. “Yeah. You can suck me after. Maybe I should’ve asked you to do it in the dressing room. I thought about it.” 

“I would have.” 

“I know. That’s why I didn’t ask.” 

Hannibal watched Will’s face and thrust up into his hand. He could feel his orgasm approaching. The slide of the bedspread against his hot skin brought it closer. He bent his arm awkwardly to grip Will’s knee. 

Will smoothed his hair back away from his eyes. “Come on,” he said. 

Hannibal shook with it. His thighs trembled. He held on hard to Will’s trousers. His cock jerked and heat spattered up his stomach and chest. 

Will bent to kiss him and then tugged at his shoulder. “Turn over. Right now. I want your mouth right now.” 

Will unzipped. Hannibal turned and sank his mouth down over Will’s cock with a sigh. The taste and scent went straight through him, down the back of his throat and into his stomach, as familiar and dear as any dish he had ever cooked. He wondered if Will knew, in moments like this, how much Hannibal would like to eat him raw, bones and all. He sucked, aware of the slide of Will’s fingers through his hair. Will’s breathing grew unsteady as Hannibal took him deeper.

Will was already wet with pre-come, and Hannibal teased more from him with his tongue before he moved back down again. He swallowed with the head in his throat. Will hissed through his teeth. His hands tightened pleasingly in Hannibal’s hair. Hannibal did it again, pulled back, and again. Will made a low noise. His other hand closed on Hannibal’s shoulder, and he was coming in thick spurts down Hannibal’s throat. 

Hannibal stayed there long enough for Will’s cock to soften in his mouth. He stayed until Will tugged him up and held him against his chest. Will’s lips pressed against his, very soft and warm, and Will’s sigh fell across his cheek. “What am I going to do with you?” 

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question,” Hannibal said. 

Will breathed laughter into his mouth and kissed him again. 

They cleaned up. Hannibal pulled the sweatpants back on, and Will took off everything but his boxers. He lay on his side and watched while Hannibal called for room service. 

“Is this going to be a thing?” Will said. 

“Would you like it to be?”

“Would you?” 

“Yes. I enjoyed it. But not if you find it discomfiting.” 

“It really didn’t hurt?” Will said. 

“I did not experience it as pain, no.” 

Will propped himself up on one elbow. “What do you experience as pain?”

“Severe physical injury. A handful of old memories.” 

“Is that really all?” 

Hannibal hesitated, unexpectedly hooked by the desire to expose himself still further. That desire was a species of pain as well. “Some of the things you have said to me.” 

Will’s expression looked on the verge of cracking. He moved closer and put his head and hand on Hannibal’s chest. “Not when I hit you though.” 

“No.” 

“Not even when I punched you in the hospital?”

“My perception of your touch has always been positive, even when your intention was otherwise.” 

Will slid a cold foot down Hannibal’s leg and tucked it under his calf. “I think I know what you mean. Even the first time you cut me, it hurt, but it wasn’t — it wasn’t really bad until you left.” He paused. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” 

Hannibal found himself unable to meet Will’s eyes. “Life is uncertain.” 

“But I’m not.”

The assurance in his tone ran through Hannibal’s body. It left him as warm and loose as the earlier blows had. He was not given to thinking either of the future or the past, but, for a moment, their years together shone ahead of him, bright and innumerable as stars, shocking in their beauty.


	3. Chapter 3

The reality of Hannibal’s boarding school matched almost precisely with the version of it he carried in his memory palace, though he had not seen it since he was seventeen. The pale stone façade was a little cleaner, the trees taller. Inside, it seemed nothing had changed at all. 

“This is a school?” Will said. He looked up at the wood paneling that stretched to a distant, shadowed ceiling in the foyer. “It looks like a Gothic romance. Did you spend the full moon running around in a nightgown with a candelabra?” 

“Not that I recall.” Hannibal nodded to the administrator who came out to greet them. Most of the students were home for the holidays, and they had been promised a tour. 

Hannibal made banal and charming smalltalk for the first ten minutes while the young man showed them the student dormitories. When he was suddenly called away by an emergency call that Hannibal had arranged earlier, they were left alone in the courtyard with apologies. 

“This way,” Hannibal said. 

“He just told us not to go wandering.” 

“We are not wandering. That implies we don’t have a specific destination.” 

Will caught up with him. The cane clicked against the marble floor. “And we do?” 

“Do you think you could walk a mile or so?”

“Probably, if we take it slow. I don’t think your school’s that big.” 

Hannibal led him down a flight of stairs and knocked on a door. He got no answer, as expected. It was locked, and he had expected that as well. The two students who occupied the room were gone until next term. He took a set of lockpicks from his pocket and set to work. 

Will leaned against the wall. “Was this your room?” 

“It was.” 

“Okay.” 

Hannibal glanced at him. “You have no objections?” 

“You're not going to steal anything, right?”

"Certainly not." The lock yielded to his efforts with a click. Both of them stepped inside, and Hannibal locked the door behind them. He went to the closet. “Did you know that Paris has more than two hundred miles of tunnels running beneath it?” 

Will paused in his examination of the room and turned toward Hannibal slowly. “This is why I need to be able to walk a mile. Your dorm room opens into the catacombs.” 

“Not when I first moved into it and not without some considerable effort, but yes.” Hannibal found the panel at the back of the closet. He slid it open to reveal the hole he had made in the brick wall beyond. “There is a ladder. It should still be sound. I will take your cane if that would help.” 

He had almost expected Will to balk at this point, but Will only handed over his cane in silence. He stuck his head through the hole and looked down into the dark. “You have a flashlight, right?”

“I do. Would you like it?” 

“If I’m going down first, yeah.” 

Hannibal handed it over. Will held it in his teeth as he descended. When they were both at the bottom, he shone the flashlight up and down the narrow tunnel. “I thought this place was full of bones.” 

“It is, in places. You will see them. The tunnels here were used by smugglers to move goods in and out of the city without taxation, not to store the dead.” 

He turned to the right, and Will followed. The flashlight beam played over the crumbling brick and stone. They walked on a gritty mix of sand and mud that muffled their footsteps. Hannibal breathed in the familiar scents of the tunnels: still air and damp earth.  

Soon, they came to a fork. Hannibal took a piece of chalk from his pocket and passed it to Will. “You must go left here. Mark it so that you will remember. High up so it is less likely to be seen.” 

Will looked at him for a long few seconds. He made his mark and followed along as Hannibal set out again. They stopped at each turning. 

“I have a pretty good memory myself, you know,” Will said. 

“This is not the place to test it.” 

Will didn’t argue. The tunnels stretched before and behind them. The dark mouths of side passages gaped to either side. 

Hannibal stopped by a hole in the wall. He took Will’s wrist to direct the flashlight beam inside. The floor was entirely hidden by a mass of disordered bones: arms and legs, ribs and hips and cracked skulls. A scattering of fingers and toes had filtered down to fill in the cracks. 

Will stared in for a long time without speaking. “There’s so many.” 

“A fraction of the whole. More than six million people have been interred under the city.” 

“Interred? They were just dumped.” Will shone the light over the bones. It did not reach the far side of the room. “Have you been in there?” 

“Yes. I took great pleasure in walking a road of corpses when I was fourteen, but it palls quickly. The footing is difficult, and I found nothing but more bones. I wouldn’t suggest it.” 

“No,” Will said. He shook his head. “Yeah, no. Not interested.” 

They passed on. The flashlight flickered. Will shook it, and the beam steadied. He glanced at Hannibal. “You brought extra batteries, right?” 

“I did, but I know the turnings well enough to follow this path in the dark. There is no need to worry.” 

“Sure,” Will said. “Just a few hundred feet underground in a maze full of corpses. No problem.” 

Despite the sarcasm, he did not sound worried. He moved more easily than he had on the Paris sidewalks, though the ground underfoot was slick in places with water and the path was narrow. His eyes moved over the walls and floor with as much interest as he’d shown in the Eiffel Tower and rather more wonder. 

“No one ever comes down here?” Will asked. 

“I imagine some of the students have found their way under the school since my time. There are explorers who dedicate themselves to finding new passages down here and new ways in as the authorities close off more and more. Only a mile or so is open legally to the public.” 

“What did you do when you weren’t walking on bones?” 

“Some exploration. There is a route out of the city.” 

“I don’t think I can walk that far.” 

“You don’t need to.” Hannibal gestured to a side room. They stepped through a jagged hole in the wall. A pile of bones sat in the corner. Hannibal knelt to clear them away and revealed a metal box. He looked up at Will as he opened it. 

“That’s a lot of gold,” Will said. 

“Yes. Some of it is stolen trinkets from my classmates and teachers. Some of it is gold coins purchased with my own money. Or other people’s. It will be here if you need it, and if we are ever separated…” 

One corner of Will’s mouth pulled up. “Meet you by the pile of bones?” 

“Yes. At the least, I can leave a message. Or you can.” 

Will reached for his hand and pulled him up. He looked as if he might speak, but, in the end, only leaned close and rested his forehead on Hannibal’s shoulder. 

“I know it has been a source of concern for you,” Hannibal said. He rested a hand in the center of Will’s back. “And that you would rather not think of it. But it is better to have a plan in place. Yes?”

Will nodded. He was still holding tight to Hannibal’s hand.

“Is this… acceptable?”

Will nodded again and swallowed. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “It’s good. Yeah.” 

Hannibal tipped his head up so he could see his face. Will resisted, but only for a second. 

He looked up with his jaw tight and his eyes wet. “I want to say it’s not fair that we have to do this, but it is. What’s not fair is that we get to have this life at all.” 

“Perhaps it is fair, and you have already paid for your current happiness.” 

“What about you?” 

Hannibal touched his thumb to Will’s lips. “I have paid. And there may be a higher price in my future.” 

“Stop saying shit like that.” Will grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him, viciously hard, teeth sharp against his mouth. “Let’s just assume everyone’s right and life isn’t fair, okay?” 

Hannibal smiled and drew him close and kissed his hair. “I’m certainly willing to entertain the idea.”


	4. Chapter 4

Will spent the morning of their last day in Paris buying a harpsichord. It belonged to an older woman who turned out to own four of them, which made Hannibal’s two back in Baltimore seem almost restrained. It was a good one, at least as far as he could tell from his research, and she was happy to let him pay cash. 

He took the metro back to the hotel, despite his various aches. He needed the time to think. It should be safe enough. The sale would go on her tax return, but nowhere else. No credit card record, no official bill of sale, though she had handwritten him a receipt. Will hadn’t told her his last name, and she hadn’t asked. Still, this was something Hannibal could have done himself, and Will wondered why he hadn’t. Maybe the right instrument hadn’t been advertised. Or maybe Hannibal had given up the idea of a harpsichord entirely after their argument in the china shop. Will couldn’t decide if that made him feel guilty or grateful.

The metro rattled through its tunnel and disgorged him onto the platform. A gust of stale air from the tunnels followed him as he made his slow ascent to street level. He thought about the room in the catacombs and the box under a pile of bones: a safeguard against their uncertain future. If that was all Hannibal got him for Christmas, it would be more than enough. 

Hannibal had the car waiting when Will reached the hotel. The back seat was piled with a worrying number of shopping bags. 

Will slid into the passenger’s seat. “What the hell did you get?” 

“Christmas gifts are generally meant to be a surprise.” 

“That can’t all be for me.” 

“Who else? Do you think I ought to have gotten something for Jack?”

“Please don’t.” 

Something approaching a smile grew on Hannibal’s face. “You will have to wait and see what ends up under the tree. Do you still want to chop down our own?”

“A saw would be easier than an axe I think, but yeah. If that’s — if you want.” 

“Of course. We have ornaments for it now. And then roasted chestnuts. I make them every year.” 

Will eyed him. “Do you?” 

“They’re very good. Have you had them?” 

“Nope.”

“Then we must. It is traditional.” Hannibal pulled away from the curb and into traffic. 

Will leaned back in his seat. “You don’t have to humor me about all this Christmas stuff, you know.” 

“I don’t have to do anything at all. Nor do you. We have chosen this life, and every day we choose it again. Nothing binds us to each other but that choice, repeated fresh every morning.”

“So you are humoring me,” Will said. 

“You do the same to please me.” 

Will thought about that one for a while. If nothing else, living with Hannibal had developed his ability to bite his tongue to superhuman levels. Even now that he didn’t worry so much about ending everything with one wrong word, the habit remained. 

They drove along broad streets thick with holiday traffic. Will watched the faces of the people they passed. Despite the crowds, many of them were smiling. “What would you do for Christmas if you were alone?” he said. “Anything?” 

“Have you left me, in this hypothetical reality?”

“No. I mean if you didn’t know me, or …” He paused. “I guess then you’d be in Baltimore, and you wouldn’t be alone anyway. Never mind. Stupid question.” 

“If I were in Baltimore and we had never met, I would still be alone. I was alone until I met you, and, until I met you, that seemed the best state I could be in.”

Will put a hand on his arm and gripped the sleeve of his coat. Sometimes he needed touch to convince himself that this was real. 

\\*

“Seriously though,” Will said after dinner. “Isn’t there anything you want to do? Traditions from when you were a kid? Anything at all?” 

They lay together on the couch in front of the fire. Hannibal was propped against the arm of the sofa with Will between his legs and leaning back against his chest. Winston and Wig were curled up with their noses touching. The doors onto the patio showed nothing of the night outside, only a pure, blank darkness with the rise and fall of reflected firelight. 

Hannibal made a considering noise. “There are traditions I recall, yes, though barely. My family did not continue them after my grandmother died, and I was very young then.” 

“Like what?”

Hannibal was silent for a long time. He shook his head. “The walls of my memory have cracked enough. Ask me next year if you still want to know. At the moment, I would prefer to leave my past in the dark.” 

“Okay. I’ll still want to know next year.” 

“I have never imagined you would become less curious or less stubborn as you grew older.”

“I’m just going to assume that’s a compliment.” 

“It is a fact. One I would not wish to change. When shall we get the tree?”

“Tomorrow?” 

Hannibal rested his cheek against Will’s. “Tomorrow.” 

\\*

Will was up before dawn the next morning. He left Hannibal to sleep and went to make French toast. While the bread soaked on the counter, he stood at the back of the house and watched light crawl over a gray landscape. A heavy frost lay on the grass. Just visible against the dark, a few thin and icy flakes started to fall. 

Will drew his robe closer around him. Wig came over to attack his toes, and he scrunched them under against the floor. “Hey,” he said softly. “Go find Hannibal, okay? Go get Hannibal. Go on.” 

She bounced twice and tore off. She was still shaky on commands that she didn’t want to obey, but this one always got results. Yips and scrabbling claws on wood came from the bedroom. 

Hannibal shuffled up behind Will a minute later. “You sent that little beast to wake me.” 

“Sure did.” 

“Why?”

Will opened his mouth and stopped. He’d wanted Hannibal to see the snow. Now it seemed like a pretty stupid reason to wake him. “Do you want to cook the French toast? You said I didn’t get it crispy enough last time.” 

"You leave it soaking for too long." Hannibal nuzzled into his neck, draped around him like a blanket, bare chested and apparently unaware of the chill. 

Will reached back to nudge his hip. “Look outside.” 

Hannibal lifted his head and gazed past their conjoined reflection in the glass. “It’s snowing.” 

“Yeah. Just a little.” 

“It won’t last. Even the frost will be gone soon with the earth so warm.” He kissed the corner of Will’s mouth. “I’m glad you woke me.” 

“Yeah?” 

“The wheel of the year continues to turn. Its progress is worthy of note.”

They stayed to note it until the snow stopped falling.

\\*

Will, Hannibal, and the dogs set out at midmorning to find their tree. Frost still clung to the grass where the sun hadn’t hit it yet, white feathers on some enormous animal’s brown fur. It had been green when they’d left for Paris. Winter had arrived in their absence. 

Will still needed his cane, especially on the uneven ground outside. He felt as if he might need it forever, as if his balance had been permanently shifted, his body beaten down so hard it would never be right again. But he could walk, and with relatively little pain. The clouds had cleared. Sun warmed their backs. 

“What did you do in Baltimore?” he asked. “On the day.” 

“I read. I cooked. It was a day like any other. And you?”

“Mostly the same.” Will picked up a stick and threw it for the dogs. They charged after it, leaving tracks in the frost. “Fixed engines. Felt sorry for myself.”

“Because you were alone?” 

“No. I didn’t really mind being alone. It was more like… I minded knowing that I’d always be alone. That there wasn’t any other choice for me.” 

“And now that there is?” 

Will just shook his head. He didn’t know how to articulate it, and Hannibal seemed to understand. They walked deeper into the woods.

“What about that one?” Will said. 

“It’s too tall.”

“It’ll fit. I’ve got a tape measure if you don’t believe me.” 

“I seem to remember you measured the opening for the stove several times.”

“Seriously?” Will said. “You said yourself the floors might’ve shifted. Anyway, I think we can afford to be off by a sixteenth of an inch.” 

“I agree that it will fit, but it is too tall proportionally for the room. It will overshadow the space and look out of scale.”

Will looked at him. “You’re that guy on the tree lot who takes two hours to pick one, aren’t you?” 

“Of course not,” Hannibal said. “In Baltimore, I had a man who knew the specifications I required.” 

Will shook his head, breathing out laughter and steam into the cold air. “Okay. So what specs are we looking for?” 

Seven feet, Hannibal told him, was the correct height for their ceiling, full and round with an even distribution of branches and a good color. It was the even distribution of branches that kept them tromping through the woods until Will was ready for lunch and Wig started shivering and had to be tucked inside Hannibal’s coat where she looked around at the world in wonder from her new height. 

“That one has a bare patch,” Hannibal said. 

“Can’t we put it against the wall like everyone else?” 

Hannibal turned to him, eyebrows raised and aesthetics offended. 

Will sighed. “What about that one?” 

“It is nearly half a foot too short.” 

Hannibal spoke almost sharply, and Will turned away to hide a smile. “We’ll keep looking.”

They kept looking until they were so deep in the woods that Will expected to push through a row of coats and emerge from a wardrobe. He was cold. His feet ached. His nose was running. For some reason, he couldn’t stop smiling. 

“This one, for real,” he said, gesturing with his cane. “That’s got to be seven feet exactly, and I don’t see any bald patches.”

Hannibal sniffed. His nose was also running. He was less cheerful about it. He held a silk handkerchief over it but didn’t actually blow. Maybe he was just trying to catch the drips. His footprints made a circle around the tree as he surveyed it for flaws. 

He nodded once. “It’s acceptable.“

Will knelt beside it in the cold grass. The frost had melted and left the ground damp and soft. Moisture soaked into his jeans. He set the saw blade against the wood. With the first cut, the smell of pine resin filled his nose and throat. Their house would smell like this. Like pine and roasting chestnuts and maybe mulled wine. Like Christmas. 

“Popcorn,” he said. 

Hannibal looked at him over the silk hanky. “What?” 

“Strings of popcorn. For the tree. Can we?” 

Hannibal’s expression softened. He wiped at his nose. “Of course, Will. Whatever you like.” 

\\*

The tree stood near the doors to the back patio. They had no tree skirt, but Hannibal had produced an immense quantity of blue velvet to wind around the bottom of it. Wig had tangled herself up in the fabric and fallen asleep. Winston slept on Will’s feet. Hannibal had dozed off on Will’s shoulder after lunch. Will slid his fingers through Hannibal’s fine hair. The glow of the fire turned it bronze like a statue. 

Will eased out from under him and went to clean up the kitchen. He looked out the window over the sink, up to his elbows in suds. Pine, roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, popcorn. What else? 

A quick search with Hannibal’s tablet showed him a small Lithuanian cookie traditional on Christmas Eve. Will glanced at Hannibal, now slumped against the arm of the couch. As much as Will wanted to breech the walls of his memory, it seemed unkind to do it like this. 

He settled on gingerbread men instead because they were traditional and because he’d never had them. They had all the ingredients, and the recipe looked fairly simple. It went fine until he decided that the dough didn’t really need to chill for four hours.

It stuck to the board. It stuck to the rolling pin. It stuck to the counter, the floor, and his hands. When he tried to wipe a smudge of flour off his face, he got dough in his beard. He swore under his breath and between clenched teeth. 

“Will?” 

“It’s fine, go back to sleep.” 

Hannibal came into the kitchen anyway. “I didn’t mean to sleep at all. What is this?” 

Will sighed. “Well, it’s definitely not gingerbread men.” 

“Did you let the dough chill?”

Will gave him a flat look. 

“We can put it in the refrigerator now. It will be ready by this evening.” 

They scraped the dough up together. Wig snuffled underfoot, licking up fallen dough scraps. Will shooed her away, but not before she’d managed to eat a substantial amount. As they were cleaning up, he heard the unmistakeable sound of a small dog upchucking in the distance. 

“Shit.” He grabbed his cane and moved as fast as he could, but she was done by the time he got there. A dough-colored pool of vomit sat just under the edge of the bed. 

Will heard a noise from behind him and saw Hannibal in the doorway, observing the scene. “I’ll finish cleaning up the kitchen,” Hannibal said. He left Will alone with the dog puke. 

Will sighed. “Don’t let her eat any more!” he called. 

“Certainly not,” Hannibal called back. 

Will could smell something baking by the time he finished cleaning up. It was an improvement on the the current smell of the bedroom. He opened the window before he left and herded Wig out of the room. 

Hannibal was mopping the kitchen floor. Wig ran over to chase the mop. “What did you make?” Will said. 

“Lusikkaleivat. It’s a sandwich cookie from Finland, traditionally made for the holidays.” 

“What goes in the middle?” 

“Jam. You can choose if you like.” Hannibal nodded toward the fridge and kept mopping, careful not to knock Wig over. 

Will looked at the jams lining the fridge door. Hannibal made some of them and bought more at the market: plum jam, peach jam, elderberry, apricot and lavender, cloudberry, fig, and a confit of jasmine flowers. Will chose all of them and lined them up on the counter next to the stove.  

Hannibal gave him an amused look. “The cookies will have to cool first.” 

“How long can that take?” 

“Long enough to make eggnog, perhaps.” 

Will made a face. “Can we skip it and just drink the rum?”

“What about wassail?” 

“Never had it. No idea what’s in it.” 

“Mainly bourbon and apple cider.” 

“I’d drink that.” 

They did drink it, in steaming cups, while they waited for the cookies to come out of the oven and then to cool. Will leaned into Hannibal on the couch. Hannibal put an arm around him and nuzzled into his hairline, nose dragging across the top of Will’s ear. 

“You asked what it’s like not being alone anymore,” Will said. “It’s like when we were at the Eiffel Tower.” 

“As if one is viewing improbable events from a distance while living them at the same time.” 

“Yeah. Exactly that.” 

Hannibal made a musing sound. “Surely my life in Baltimore was more unlikely, but it never seemed so at the time.” 

“It’s what we were used to, I guess. Mine wasn’t that likely either. Pretty normal compared to yours, but …” 

“Perhaps anything would have seemed ordinary to us, had we done it alone.” 

That idea lodged hard in Will’s throat. He had to swallow a couple of times before he could answer. “Maybe. Yeah.” 

\\*

They put jam on the cookies. They baked the gingerbread men. They popped popcorn and threaded it on strings and drank more wassail than was good for either of them, heavier on the bourbon with each new round. Winston fell asleep sitting up with his head on Will’s knee. 

Hannibal had stopped even pretending to help with the popcorn strings and gazed at Will. “It’s the longest night of the year. A night for lighting fires against the dark.”

“What do you want to burn?”

“Everything that lies between us.” 

“That’s a lot.” Will finished his most recent cup of wassail, jabbed at a tough piece of popcorn, and pricked his finger on the needle. 

Hannibal’s nostrils flared as a single bead of blood welled up. He closed both hands around Will’s wrist and took Will’s entire finger in his mouth. His eyes sank closed as he sucked. Will bit his lip. He didn’t want to make a sound that might disturb this moment. He didn’t even want to breathe. 

Hannibal looked so unconscious, so purely intent on what he was doing. He pressed his tongue to the pad of Will’s finger and sucked harder for a second before he let it go. He raised hazy eyes to meet Will’s. “Is it too much? Can we never be …”

“Be what?” 

“Together. One. Shriven of our pasts.” Hannibal bowed his head. “I wish you could forgive me. Not because I am sorry, but only because I want it. I want it very much, Will.” 

Will wanted to give it to him. He kissed Hannibal’s wet lips and thought he caught the taste of blood. “Get up.” 

“Why?” 

“You wanted to burn everything between us. Better make a bonfire.” 

“Are we speaking literally now?”

“We are. Go on.” 

Hannibal raised his head and blinked at him two or three times, but he got up without question or argument. Will wondered if it was a good idea to leave the fire building to someone who was having trouble walking a straight line to the back door, but he wasn’t much better off himself. And he needed to get something. 

He joined Hannibal outside a few minutes later. The fire was larger than Will had expected. 

“You did say we had a lot to burn,” Hannibal said. 

“Were you expecting me to toss you in?” The flames soared up nearly as tall as they were, eating away at fallen tree branches with red and orange hunger. 

“I considered it as a possibility.”

“Hope you’re not disappointed. This is all I’ve got.” 

Hannibal took the paper he offered and unfolded it. He studied the childish drawing, the two figures, the dinosaurs. “This is from the son of the man I killed.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Do you expect me to feel regret?”

“No,” Will said. He looked at Hannibal, who was focused on the drawing again. “Do you?” 

“I… regret that it has hurt you,” Hannibal said slowly. “I think, now, I would act differently. To spare you pain.” He looked up at Will. His eyes caught the firelight and reflected its warmth rather than its hunger. “There are many things I would do differently to spare you pain.”

Will’s throat tightened. “I was going to burn it. To — I don’t know. To put it behind us. I can’t keep chewing on it.”

“You are still angry.” 

“I don’t know if I am. I wasn’t expecting you to…” The hiss and pop of the fire nearly ate his words. “What would you do differently? To spare me pain?” 

Hannibal stepped close but didn’t touch him. “I don’t know.” He paused. “Perhaps the only way to spare you would be to ensure that we never met. I don’t think I am that selfless.” 

Will took his hand. “I don’t want you to be that selfless.” 

Hannibal laced his fingers through Will’s. His palm felt warm and damp. “Do you know that I love you?” 

“I know.” Will looked up at him and squeezed his hand. There was a strange intimacy to it, as if these were their naked bodies pressed together, guarding each other from the cold. “I know you do. It’s okay.” 

“Then I should be that selfless. But you have changed me so much, Will. If I had to be the person I am now without you, I don’t know… I cannot imagine that life at all.” 

Will took the drawing back from him. He looked at it one more and then let it slip from his hand into the fire. The flames lifted it up over their heads. Char spread inward, ate holes in the image, and swallowed it.

“You did not wish to keep it?” Hannibal said. 

“What for? To remind me to feel guilty in case I forget? I’m done.” He tipped his head back and blew steam at the night sky. “I would really like to be done.” 

“I am sorry,” Hannibal said softly. “I’m sorry I cannot be other than what I am. I would be, for you.” 

Will slid his arms around Hannibal’s waist. The wind sent a constellation of sparks up into the sky. Will smiled against Hannibal’s shoulder, heart lifting to follow them. “You’re forgiven,” he said. 

Hannibal’s arms tightened around him. They held each other like two palms pressed together, warm despite the bitter world around them.


	5. Chapter 5

The wassail hangover hit them both, but it was harder on Hannibal. Will woke to the sound of him being sick in the bathroom, which he hadn’t quite believed was possible. Will squinted at the ceiling and wondered if he should get up and do something.  

He started to sit, but his head sloshed with hot, nauseated pain. He carefully lay back down. Hannibal walked stiffly into the room, set down water and aspirin on the bedside table, got into bed, and lay down flat with a damp cloth over his eyes. 

Will squinted at it. “M’jealous,” he said. 

Hannibal pointed silently toward the aspirin. 

Will took them and drank the water. “Going to shower.” 

Hannibal made no response. 

Will stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out. He didn’t think Hannibal would be wanting it any time soon. He made coffee and fed the dogs. The cold air when he let them out helped his head. The coffee helped more. He stood outside, barefoot on the stone patio with his toes slowly going numb and the steam warming his face. The air smelled of cold rain and leaves returning to the soil. 

Nearly human again, Will poked his head into the bedroom. “You alive?” 

Hannibal raised two fingers from the blanket, let them fall, and made a small negative noise. 

“Coffee?” 

Hannibal turned his head away. A moment later, he seemed to regret moving even that much and turned it carefully back to center. 

Will got him more water and the eye mask he kept in the freezer behind the giant knob of fresh churned butter he’d bought at the market a while back. Hannibal frowned at it and then at Will, but he let out a breath of relief when Will laid it across his face. 

“I do look in the freezer occasionally, you know. When do you even use it? I’ve never seen you.” 

“I haven’t since you got back,” Hannibal murmured. “My eyes ache when I stay up too late reading.” 

“Which you did because I wasn’t there to fall asleep on you.” 

Hannibal made a tiny noise of assent. Will smoothed his hair back from his face. "Anything else I can do to help?"

"Stay."

"Okay. Hold on. I want to get some more coffee." Will came back with coffee and gingerbread men and got into bed with him. Hannibal turned over and laid his upper body across Will's lap with a sigh. Will rubbed the back of his head. "Let's go easier on the wassail next year."

"I believe I would prefer wine," Hannibal mumbled. 

"We put those popcorn strings on the tree last night. Do you remember?"

"No," Hannibal said, though it sounded less like a denial of the memory than of the entire night. There had been a fair amount of straight bourbon after the wassail and the bonfire. 

"I sort of do. Anyway, we better try again. It looks like drunk elves invaded our living room."

Hannibal grunted. Will ate a gingerbread man and left him in peace. 

"Crumbs," Hannibal said. 

"I'll change the sheets later."

"I mean that you are getting crumbs on me. I can feel them in my hair."

He was right. Will brushed them out. Hannibal made a discontented sound and buried his face in the bend of Will's thigh and hip. 

Will stroked the back of his neck. "Is this why you like it when I'm hurt?"

"I don't like it when you are hurt."

"You'd rather I wasn't, but you still enjoy it. You like that I need you. That I'm vulnerable."

Hannibal was quiet for a few seconds. "Yes. You feel the same?"

"Yeah. Not the nicest way to feel, I guess. But I like... I like this."

Hannibal turned his head carefully  and blinked up at him with the most open expression Will had ever seen on his face. He could hear the click of gears inside Hannibal's mind slow and stop. 

Will cupped his cheek and stroked the sharp line of his cheekbone and soft hollow under his eye. "You like it too."

Hannibal turned toward Will's palm and used it to hide his face. "Yes. Very much."

"We can do this anytime you want. Doesn't have to be post-wassail.”

"I didn't know I wanted it," Hannibal said. 

They stayed like that, almost without moving, for another hour while Hannibal drifted off. Will watched him sleep. After a while, he slept himself. 

\\*

Hannibal recovered enough to go to the market that afternoon for his Christmas dinner shopping, which was fortunate because Will had scheduled the harpsichord delivery for that day. 

It arrived so soon after Hannibal left that they must have passed each other on the road. Will hoped they hadn't passed each other in the driveway, or he'd have some explaining to do when Hannibal got back. The movers took it into the music room and settled it by the windows. It looked just like Will had imagined it would. As he paid and saw them off, he heard music in the back of his mind and saw himself sitting at his desk in the corner and listening. 

For a second, he wondered if he should move the desk, if Hannibal might prefer to be alone, but only for a second. Will had never been as sure of his welcome with anyone as he was with Hannibal. He swept the floor one more time, switched off the lights, and closed the door until Christmas morning. 

After he'd taken the dogs out to play, cleaned up the last of the mess from the night before, and made himself a sandwich, he rehung all the popcorn strings. It took longer than it should have, and the dogs kept trying to eat them, but he was nearly finished by the time Hannibal walked in the door. 

Will looked over at him. Hannibal was wearing a faintly cross expression and brushing rain off his jacket and the bottoms of his pants while Wig tried to sniff every part of him at once. Their eyes met across the room, and both of them smiled. 

"Missed you," Will said. He had meant it to be casual, but it came out sounding almost shy.

"I missed you as well." Hannibal picked Wig up and met Will in the middle of the room for a kiss that also aspired to be casual and didn't make it. The bonfire last night had burned off another layer of their armor. Every touch felt new and tender. 

"I fixed the popcorn," Will said. 

"It does look better. I have a pheasant for Christmas dinner." 

"What are you doing with it?" 

"I had thought pheasant Normandy, but I'm not certain that I want any more apple cider at the moment. Perhaps roasted with lemon. Will you help?"

"Sure. I'd like to." 

They looked at each other for a long, warm moment, and Will had to laugh. 

"What is it?" Hannibal said. 

"I don't know. Everything's easy all of a sudden." 

"Then let us take advantage of it. I'm sure it won't last." 

Will rolled his eyes and helped him put away the groceries. 

\\*

Hannibal had also bought lights for the tree. He'd floated the idea of candles, but Will just looked at him, looked at the dogs, and he'd dropped it. They put them up that afternoon, hung the ornaments, and laid pine branches along the mantelpiece. The resin scent from the boughs and the tree filled the whole house. That evening, they roasted chestnuts in the fireplace and ate them sitting on the floor. Winston flopped over Hannibal's leg, and Wig curled up in the bend of his knee. 

"They like you better," Will said. He couldn't stop smiling. 

"I feed them more often than you do." 

"True."

Hannibal had foregone wine and even coffee and made them both tea steeped in hot milk with honey. 

"This is a little gross," Will said. 

"It is soothing. If you don't want it, there is nothing stopping you from making coffee yourself."

“Yours is better.” 

Hannibal looked predictably pleased. "I suppose I could—”

"No, don't." Will caught his wrist. "It's okay. Stay here." 

The next few days passed with the same quiet warmth. They walked the dogs. They brined the pheasant. Will turned off his computer and phone the day before Christmas. He didn't want to get a last minute call from Jack or Interpol. He only wanted this feeling to last. 

Before he fell asleep on Christmas Eve, he spent a few minutes lying in the dark, listening to Hannibal breathe and wondering why this seemed so significant when his past Christmases as an adult had been one more date on the calendar. He thought of the scar on his thigh, the Lecter crest. Will had been alone since his father died and often enough before that. Maybe this was what family was supposed to feel like. 

\\*

On Christmas morning, he woke up with something lying across his feet. His first thought was that it was one of the dogs, but it wasn’t heavy enough for Winston and Wig would bite his toes. He rubbed at his eyes and squinted down at it. 

A red and white tube lay over his ankles. It took Will a good ten seconds of sleepy blinking to pick up on the fact that it was knitted, vaguely sock-shaped, stuffed with stuff, and in all respects resembled a Christmas stocking. It had a small silver jingle bell on the toe. 

Hannibal wasn’t in the room, and breakfast smells were coming from the kitchen. Will got himself into a sitting position and held the stocking in his lap. The first little package fell out. It was wrapped in gold tissue paper and soft all the way through. He weighed it in his hand. Light. 

His last Christmas stocking had been when he was seven. He'd gotten into an argument with his dad over the existence of Santa and then of God. It had also been the first time Will had really pushed his dad to tell him something, anything about his mother, and it had ended with him getting grounded on Christmas Day. He’d gotten a wind-up car, a yo-yo, a chocolate bar, and an orange. He was pretty sure this stocking had an orange stuck down in the toe too. 

Hannibal came into the room bearing a breakfast tray. “I see I’m just in time.” 

“I didn’t get you one,” Will said. “Didn’t even think about it.” 

“It never occurred to me that you would. But I thought you might enjoy it.” 

Will held the first soft little package in his hands. “You’re not going to do this every year, right?” 

“Should I not point out that you sound as if you hope I will?” 

“You should not point that out, no. I’ll just open this.” He took a sip of coffee and started unwrapping tissue paper. A pair of leather work gloves emerged. They were tan and lined with blue fleece and fit perfectly. “These are really nice,” Will said, hoping he’d managed to keep the surprise out of his voice. 

“I am aware of the sort of thing you like,” Hannibal said. “I simply don’t see any harm in trying to expand your horizons occasionally. But not in your Christmas stocking.” 

Will leaned over to kiss him. “Is that a house rule?” 

“It can be.” 

The next thing was a small box containing four small chocolates dusted with gold. The package after that was weightier and rigid. Will unwrapped it and found the Orvis Access titanium fly reel that he’d been thinking about buying last winter before he left for France. He stared at Hannibal. “Can you literally read my mind? I didn’t say a word about this. It’s not even in my browser history.” 

Hannibal looked pleased. “I asked someone at a shop and described your interests. I’m glad he knew what he was talking about.” 

“They have fishing stores in Paris?”

“Of course.” 

Will set the reel on his knee to admire and fished out the last item, which was indeed an orange. He held it in his hands and looked down at it, remembering the orange he’d gotten in his last stocking. His hands hadn’t fit all the way around it. “Thank you. For all of this. Did you really get a tree every year in Baltimore? Or do Christmas at all?” 

Hannibal put an arm around him and held out Will’s coffee cup until he took it. “I got one when I had holiday parties, which was most years. The wassail, the chestnuts, yes, fairly often for my guests. I had never made gingerbread men before.” 

“You still haven’t. I made them. You just baked them.” 

“I think we may call it a joint effort.” 

“Nope. I even cut most of them out. And cleaned up the dog puke.” 

Hannibal brushed a kiss across his temple. “If you insist.” 

They ate croissants and plum jam while the light shifted from white to pale gold. Hannibal twitched the curtains apart to show a pink stained sky. 

Peaceful as it was, Will kept seeing the harpsichord sitting in the music room and was only halfway through his second croissant when his patience ran out. “I got you something. You want to see?” 

“I didn’t see anything under the tree.” 

There were a number of boxes under the tree, most of them, as threatened, for Will, but not all. Winston and Wig each had a box as well. “It wouldn’t fit under the tree. It’s in the back room.” 

Hannibal looked at him, spreading jam on his croissant. “You don’t want to wait until after breakfast.” 

“Not really.”

“All right.” He set the tray aside and pushed back the covers. “Let’s go.” 

Will led him down the hall. Both of the dogs joined them and snuffled at their bare feet. Will stopped at the door, eyes on the wood grain in front of him. “If you don’t like it, or it’s the wrong kind, or—” He clutched the doorknob. 

“Will. Open the door.” 

He opened the door. His heart gave a massive thump as Hannibal stepped into the room. 

Hannibal stopped when he saw it. He said nothing. After a second or two, he walked forward until he could lay a finger on the strip of dark wood inlaid into the cherry. He put his other hand on it and moved around until he could touch the keys and then he sank down onto the bench and began to play. 

It was nothing Will knew, but the music pulled at him. He drifted over, and Hannibal shifted on the bench to make room. The notes flowed upward to an odd discordant peak and cracked into descending shards of shattered glass that hit the ground and settled into silence. 

Will looked at Hannibal’s blank face. “What was that?” 

“My own composition. Untitled. I wrote it years ago.” He skimmed his fingers over the keys. “After that first dinner party.” 

“When you fed them the man you killed in the mental hospital.” 

Hannibal inclined his head an inch. “I haven’t thought of it since I left Baltimore, but it returned to me the moment I touched the keys.” He took Will’s hand and placed it on the smooth, cool white of the ivory. 

“Is it okay? The harpsichord? It’s a good one, right?” 

Will expected questions about how he’d gotten it, if it could be traced, but Hannibal only laid his hand over Will’s and pressed his fingers down on a chord. “It is superb. I have missed playing.” 

“You can keep going. We haven’t got anywhere to be.” 

Hannibal hesitated, but his eyes returned to the keys and he touched them with his free hand. “Perhaps …” 

Will listened to him play for the next hour. He would’ve listened for longer. Hannibal played beautifully, which was unsurprising; Will wasn’t sure he willingly did anything that he was less than perfect at. What kept Will riveted was Hannibal’s half-closed eyes and almost dreamy expression, the way he moved with the music and the way it seemed to peel back another layer of his facade. 

Hannibal finally stopped and closed the lid on the keyboard. "I would like to show you your gift now," he said. 

He spoke so quietly that the words blended with the mood of the music. Will took his offered hand in silence. They walked into the living room with notes still hanging in the air around them. 

Hannibal chose a box from under the tree. It was about the size of his palm, flat and thin. "That is part of it," he said. 

Will eased up the tape and peeled back the paper. He suspected jewelry or some family heirloom. In a way, he was right. When he lifted off the lid, he saw the single surviving photograph of his mother, the one that fallen into a puddle on his basement floor when Walter Drake took him. Zeller and Price had shown him what was left of it later, a pile of soggy pulp in an evidence bag. 

Will stared at it. His mother looked back at him, smiling, hair and dress blowing in the wind. This was the second time he'd gotten it for Christmas. His father had given it to him the same year he'd been grounded on Christmas day for talking back. _Now you know everything I do, so stop asking._

It took him a few seconds to even form a coherent protest. "This can't — it was destroyed." He looked at Hannibal. "They showed it to me. There was no way you could've fixed it. Nobody could have.” 

"I didn't. Here. This is the second part." Hannibal gave him another box, this one larger but still flat. 

Will couldn't wait to peel the paper off this time. He ripped it down the center and revealed a wooden box with a hinge, about six inches square and not more than an inch deep. He opened it, and it unfolded into something like a saint's icon. Hannibal had painted his mother exactly as she had been in the photograph. If anything, she was more lifelike here than she had been on the ancient photo paper, glowing with color and ready to step out of the wood panel. 

"The photograph is of the painting," Hannibal said. "The original is, as you said, lost."

"But how — how did you even see it? You didn't leave France until after Drake got me." 

"I did not see it in person. Ms. Lounds had a picture of it on her phone. I saw that." 

"And you painted it just from that. From memory." 

"Memory can be powerful." Hannibal paused. "I wasn't certain it would be welcome." 

Will held the painting open on his lap and leaned into Hannibal’s side. "It's welcome." 

“Are there memories you would care to share?" 

"Of her? I don’t have any. I was being literal when I said I never knew her. Dad wouldn't say much. I don't even know if she's dead or alive. That photo was all I had. Have." He picked it up again and held it up next to the painting. "When did you find time for this? Where — do you have a secret painting studio in the basement?"

"In the old bedroom upstairs. It seemed safe enough while you were in the wheelchair. I have been concerned you might want to move back up there, but I relied on your dislike of change." 

Will elbowed him gently and then turned to kiss him. He lingered there with his eyes closed, Hannibal's warm mouth under his and the soft sigh of his breath. "Thank you."

"Merry Christmas, Will." 

"We should probably forget about gifts next year. Neither of us is going to be able to top this." 

Hannibal slid his fingers through Will's hair. "Perhaps not, but I will enjoy trying." 

"The fishing reel was pretty good." 

"We should go somewhere in the spring. I believe there are some good spots near the Swiss border. You can test it out." 

"While you do what? Not fish, I assume." 

"Keep the dogs occupied. Walk in the woods. Draw you." 

"You won't be bored? I can go on my own." 

"I will not be bored." He looked out at the garden and the pond and the pale blue sky. "I cannot imagine being bored in your presence any more than I can imagine being bored with our life together.”

Will looked at his faraway expression. “Are you happy? You said you were content, but that’s not the same thing. Can you be happy without …” Killing. He’d been afraid to ask before. He was still afraid now. 

Hannibal turned back to him. He looked a little like he had when he was playing the harpsichord, solemn and oddly younger. “I am happy, yes. More than I have ever been. What would you do if I said no?” 

“I really don’t know. Rather not find out.” 

“You don’t need to.” 

“Promise?” 

Hannibal took his hand. “I promise.”

Will let out a slow breath and took another, filled with the scent of pine from their Christmas tree, woodsmoke from the fireplace, and Hannibal at his side. “I believe you,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can check out my [original writing here](http://www.eleanorkos.com/) if you're interested. This is my tumblr: [emungere.tumblr.com](http://emungere.tumblr.com), and this is the [tumblr post for this story](http://emungere.tumblr.com/post/154935004207/turn-of-the-year-emungere-hannibal-tv).
> 
> -
> 
> I've had a few questions about the future of this series, and there's a [tumblr post about it here](http://emungere.tumblr.com/post/154983785382/you-said-a-while-back-that-ladders-would-come-to). And I just want to say thank you to everyone who's read this. It makes me so happy to know that you're enjoying their weird domestic journey along with me. Best wishes to you all & may the new year be better than the last for all of us. <3
> 
> -
> 
> Update: there's an ebook of the whole series now, which you can find [here](https://emungere.tumblr.com/post/172464790382/a-while-ago-i-promised-you-all-an-ebook-of).


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